But our diminutive perception of time, the same that makes us think we are the center of everything, is just an illusion. At the cosmic scale, just like in our individual lives, things move constantly. The architecture of the cosmos is ever changing and scientists know—since 2007, only a few years after they were observed—that these gargantuan structures don’t exist anymore.
via This Story of Galactic Destruction and Time Will Blow Your Mind.
Adrian Warnock, via facebook and twitter, suggested: “The Pillars of Creation Were Actually Destroyed Before We Discovered Them”
He suggested as such due to the above linked too article. They are about the recently named “Pillars of Creation,” a feature of space which haven’t existed for a while… I can’t really tell what he means… is he being sarcastic or does he believe in the misguided reading of Genesis 1 called Young Earth Creationism? I’m not really sure…
So, I’ll just sort of respond to others who actually believe that the Universe is no older than 6000 years…
Wrong.
Also, these things were named after the mythical features in Scripture:
This is what so-called Biblical Literalists don’t like to see… this is what the ancients Hebrew and other ANE authors saw as the Cosmos.
But… Anyway, it’s a great article showing why Time is an illusion and why Young Earth Creationism cannot be correct, in any sense, unless you have such a mind-bending paradox that it is no longer possible to believe that we have existed before this very moment.
HT to Peter Kirk for this, via Facebook and Twitter.
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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So, if time is an illusion, then can I have supper again?
As Joel would say, “Bazinga!”
Thanks for the mention and for taking this up. I don’t think my friend Adrian is taking a YEC position here. But he perhaps noted the irony of how it might interact with YEC ideas.
Actually the article doesn’t make sense. It states that the Pillars are 7,000 light years away. As we can see the “supernova that happened 6,000 years ago” it is no more than 6,000 light years away, and so at least 1,000 light years from the Pillars. That means that even if the shock wave travels at the speed of light it could not have reached the Pillars until 5,000 years ago, and so we will not see the results for 2,000 years, not 1,000 years as stated in the article. OK, there may be some rounding errors involved. But perhaps a more accurate figure is given earlier in the article, that the Pillars were destroyed about 1,000 years ago, which means we won’t see their destruction for 6,000 years. That also means that even for YECs they may actually have existed for a time – although the only evidence for their existence is the fake image from a time when they had not yet been created.
I also linked to all of your posts on Adrian, btw.
Thanks! Fun reading for someone.